As we enter the cold winter months many senior citizens will have a choice to make again this year, with soaring fuel bills due to rise again in January 2025 can they afford to eat, and heat their homes?

Many will not be able to do both.

The Labour Party before the general election predicted an additional 4000 senior citizens would die of hypothermia if the last Tory Government scrapped the Winter Heating Allowance this winter, what did Labour and our local MP Douglas McAllister do? They scrapped the Winter Fuel Allowance for 11 million senior citizens many of whom reside in West Dunbartonshire, within weeks of gaining office in May 2024. Hypocrites.

No money for our senior citizens to heat their homes but Labour are giving the fascist regime in Ukraine £3b to bomb the elderly in Russia.

Labour also continue to sell weapons to the Zionist Government in Israel to bomb civilians in Gaza with 45,000 already killed, many of them women and children yet Sir Keir Starmer comes out with the same mealy mouthed defence, Israel has the right to defend itself. Starmer as a lawyer knows it is the occupied people, the Palestinians, under International Law who have the right to defend themselves, not Israel who is the occupier.

A rough estimate is it will cost £650m to defray the increase in National Insurance payments for the 32 councils in Scotland and other public sector staff. Will the Labour Government compensate the public sector in Scotland for this unbudgeted burden?

WDC has over 4000 applicants on the housing waiting list. The council only has 10,000 homes in total. The council has declared a housing crisis as many other council's in Scotland have done due to the shortage of public sector homes for rent. Homelessness is on the rise across Scotland.

If the Labour Government are keen to grow the economy then a good start would be to initiate and fund a massive council house-building programme across Scotland to deal with the homeless crisis and the shortage of suitable council homes across the country. This would create jobs and increase tax revenues.

This would be investment based on real desperate need in our country, for the tens of thousands languishing on council waiting lists for years for a suitable rented home.